Gov hits back, but clearing house still costs too much

21 June 2011
| By Ashleigh McIntyre |

The Federal Government’s Medicare-based clearing house for small businesses has sparked a war of words with the Opposition, which claims it is costing $177 for every transaction.

In a statement justifying the Coalition’s plan to establish an alternative clearing house, the Opposition claimed that at a cost of $16 million per year for 90,000 transactions, this equated to $177 per transaction.

But the Government hit back yesterday, stating the Opposition got its figures wrong and that the clearing house cost $16 million over three years, not $16 million per year.

This would still equate to almost $60 per transaction.

Both the Small Business Minister, Senator Nick Sherry, and Minister for Superannuation, Bill Shorten, teamed up for the joint release stating the Coalition had its figures wrong and that the clearing house had received a high level of satisfaction.

“Yet, the Coalition wants to spend up to $368 million of taxpayers’ money to set up a duplicate scheme,” Shorten said.

“The coalition is incapable of coming up with effective policies, all they come up with is sloppy maths and mindless negativity,” he added.

Read more about:

AUTHOR

Recommended for you

sub-bgsidebar subscription

Never miss the latest developments in Super Review! Anytime, Anywhere!

Grant Banner

From my perspective, 40- 50% of people are likely going to be deeply unhappy about how long they actually live. ...

1 year 4 months ago
Kevin Gorman

Super director remuneration ...

1 year 4 months ago
Anthony Asher

No doubt true, but most of it is still because over 45’s have been upgrading their houses with 30 year mortgages. Money ...

1 year 4 months ago

A major super fund has defended its use of private markets in a submission to ASIC, asserting that appropriate governance and information-sharing practices are present in...

1 day 13 hours ago

A member body representing some prominent wealth managers is concerned super funds’ dominance is sidelining small companies in capital markets....

2 days 10 hours ago

While the latest quarterly CPI print exceeded expectations, most economists still anticipate a rate cut, especially amid growing downside risks to global growth stemming ...

2 days 10 hours ago

TOP PERFORMING FUNDS

ACS FIXED INT - AUSTRALIA/GLOBAL BOND